Authenticity seems more a matter of ranges and limitations than of outright prescriptions.
- Jeffrey Steingarten, The Man Who Ate Everything

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Pu Tien Restaurant, Marina Square

I had been wanting to give this place (6 Raffles Boulevard, #02-205 Marina Square, tel : +65 6336 4068) a try for the longest time now. Now that I have, I ended up with pretty mixed feelings about the restaurant. I did honestly find the food enjoyable in spite of the small portions for each serving. The wait staff like troopers, put up with an admirable plasticity to the incessant queries from the maddening queue on the statuses of the tables. What threw off a possibly good impression for a start was that we still had to wait for over half an hour despite having made reservations already.

If I were to be asked what I had liked about the food, I guess it would be pretty much everything was enjoyable except for the desserts. The sweet and sour pork was decently done and their signature fried bee hoon was probably a little bit overrated in my opinion. Still liked it though. Their sweet chilled seaweed and springy textured braised pig intestines (that looked like it was stuffed with more intestines) flavored in some Chinese wine more than made up it. Not to mention too, a very plate of fresh tasting fried Chinese mustard and their interesting rendition of what tasted like a stir fried sweet and sour century egg.

A pity about that pumpkin cream which was really drowned out by the coconut flavors and sweet potatoes that were suspiciously soft to the point that I didn't quite enjoy them. It didn't quite help that the ginger tea that was served along with them was more sugary than gingery. Didn't enjoy the lukewarm fried potato balls that was a tad greasy and floury tasting with the fillings neither.

And oh yeah, I did say that the bee hoon was overrated. I didn't say it was bad. Au contraire.